Reflections, excerpts, and stories along the way.

My Dog and the Fire

For several years I was a latchkey kid. I was usually the first one home after school. I would get off the school bus and spend a couple of hours alone before everyone else arrived. My mother worked double shifts, so during the week I rarely saw her. She was already gone by the time I woke up for school, and most nights she did not get home until after I was asleep.

One afternoon stands out more than any other.

I think I was about nine or ten years old, and my oldest sister was home with me that day. Before leaving to meet up with a guy, she told me she would be right back.

“Stay in the house,” she said. “And don’t open the door for no one!”

I remember sitting on the floor in my bedroom, absentmindedly digging at my belly button with a sewing needle. There was still a little bit of what I believed was dried umbilical cord residue there, and for whatever reason, I had become fascinated with trying to remove it.

Outside, our dog was tied to the avocado tree in the front yard. He started barking nonstop, but this was not his normal bark. He was barking feverishly.

His bark was so unusual that I climbed onto my twin-sized bed and looked through the iron bars covering my bedroom window. He was looking directly toward me with panic in his eyes, barking so intensely that I remember thinking he was going to break the chain wrapped around the tree.

I climbed back down and returned to the floor, trying to ignore him and going right back to digging at my belly button. But he would not stop barking. Eventually, it became impossible to ignore.

I climbed back onto my bed, looked out the window again, and yelled, “What are you barking for, you stupid dog?”

Then something happened that I have thought about many times over the years.

Even though I knew I was not supposed to leave the house, and even though I had specifically been told not to open the front door, something compelled me to get up and go outside to him.

Looking back now, the only way I know how to describe it is that it felt as though an unseen hand was leading me.

I was not going outside to disobey or to play. I simply felt compelled to go to my dog.

As I walked toward the living room, I saw black smoke and orange and red flames billowing from the kitchen. The entire kitchen was engulfed in flames, fully ablaze.

My whole world shook.

Without thinking, I made the fastest dash for the front door and sprinted out of our duplex as fast as my legs could carry me. I ran up the block screaming at the top of my lungs, “Help! Somebody help! There’s a fire! Help!”

Neighbors came running out of their homes and saw the flames and smoke filling the sky. Someone called 911, and before long the fire department arrived. I watched as the firefighters rushed into the house and began taming the fire. Around the same time, my sister and the rest of my siblings arrived.

By the time the fire was out, the kitchen was a charred mess. The room I had walked through so many times was blackened and destroyed.

I do not remember every conversation that took place that afternoon, but I remember one thing very clearly. My sister warned me not to tell the police or the fire investigators that I had been home alone.

Or else.

I knew exactly what that meant, so I stayed quiet.

Looking back now, what stands out to me is not just the fire. It is what I silently hoped for in the middle of all that chaos.

I desperately wanted one of the firefighters to pull me aside. I wanted someone to ask me what had really happened. I wanted someone to slow everything down long enough to notice me.

Instead, the story was quickly explained away. Hot oil had been left burning on the stove, and everyone had been home when the fire broke out.

No one questioned it.

One firefighter looked at me and simply asked if I was okay. I quietly nodded my head yes, and that was it.

Everything happened so fast. The fire was extinguished, the reports were taken, everyone left, and just like that, everything was brushed under the rug.

I was only a little girl, but I understood the magnitude of what had happened.

I had been home alone, and I had nearly died in that house fire.

Looking back now, I do not believe I survived because I was lucky. I believe it was undoubtedly one of those miracles of God that kept and protected me.

All these years later, through all of my highs and lows, that day has remained with me. I still think about the fact that our dog would not stop barking. Had I been asleep, had the dog been asleep, or had I ignored his barking for even a few more minutes, I believe I would have been trapped in that back bedroom.

There would have been no way out.

Every window in our duplex was covered with iron bars, a common sight in the inner city, installed for protection against burglary and crime.

Ironically, those same bars meant to protect me would have kept me from escaping.

I did not understand it at nine or ten years old, but I understand it now. Something made that dog bark until I paid attention. Something compelled me to get up from that bedroom floor and walk toward the front door at exactly the right moment.

In hindsight, I believe that something was God.